Christ is to dwell within us and
every man is to be the object of it. God and we are to become one
spirit, that is, one in will and one in desire. Christ must live
within us. We must be filled with the Holy Ghost, which is the God of
Love; we must be of the same mind with Christ Jesus and led by His
Spirit, and we must henceforth treat every man in respect to the
greatness of Christ's love--this is salvation in Traherne's conception
of it, and holiness and happiness are the same thing.[41] The Cross
has not done its complete work for us until we can say: "O Christ, I
see thy crown of thorns in every eye; thy bleeding, naked, wounded body
in every soul; thy death liveth in every memory; thy crucified person
is embalmed in every affection; thy pierced feet are bathed in every
one's tears and it is my privilege to enter with thee into every
soul."[42]

However contemplative and mystical the bent of Traherne's mind may have
been, he always finds the {334} terminus of spiritual life in action,
indeed, in brotherly service, in what he calls "blessed operations."
Speaking apparently of himself, he finely says: "He thought it a vain
thing to see glorious principles buried in books, unless he did remove
them into his understanding; and a vain thing to remove them into his
understanding unless he did revive them and raise them up with
continual _exercise_. Let this therefore be the first principle of
your soul--that to have no principles or to live beside them is equally
miserable. Philosophers are not those that speak but do great
things."[43] "It is," he writes in words which sound like those of his
contemporary Winstanley, "it is an indelible principle of Eternal
truth, that practice and exercise is the Life of all. Should God give
you worlds and laws and treasures, and worlds upon worlds, and Himself
also in the Divinest manner, if you will be lazy you lose all. The
soul is made for action and cannot rest till it be employed. . . . If
therefore you would be happy, your life must be as full of operation as
God of treasure."[44]

Love, once kindled in the soul, is the mother of all heroic actions;
love knows how to abound and overflow--the man who has lighted his life
from Christ's love is constant in trials, patient in sufferings,
courageous in assaults, prudent in difficulties, victorious and
triumphant in action.[45]

Traherne shares with Boehme and with the Cambridge Platonists the view
that Eternity is as muc